...here is a link and the text of a review in today's New York Daily News.....3 STARS, which in reality tv terms, is basically as high as it goes.

btw, shouldn't someone be starting a vote thread right about now? Dabs? Webby? Supe? Anybody home?

http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-09-10/New_York_Now/Television/a-124803.asp

'Love Cruise'
Is Quite See-Worthy

By DAVID BIANCULLI
Daily News TV Columnist

LOVE CRUISE: THE MAIDEN VOYAGE. Tomorrow night at 9, Fox.

here's a bumper crop of reality TV this season, but most of the harvest is rotten. The newest entry in this overcrowded and largely underwhelming genre is tomorrow's "Love Cruise: The Maiden Voyage" (Fox, 9 p.m.), which is no "Temptation Island."

By the way, that's a good thing.

Not that it's great, or begins any less artificially or meanspiritedly. Just that, in the end, its contestants start to become more revealing than revolting.

'Love Cruise' is no 'Temptation Island,' but that's a good thing.
"Love Cruise" takes 16 young singles, lured by the potential for fame and/or money, if not by one another, and has them interact, pair off, engage in contests and eventually vote to see who will walk the plank, until only one passenger remains on this Caribbean cruise.

The premise — enforced dating, encouraged conflicts, unavoidable rejections — borrows from both "Temptation Island" and "Survivor." The contest in tomorrow's opener is basic "Truth or Dare."

And the very first pairings, which have the eight women deciding which men they'd like to spend the first 48 hours with and then stand next to them accordingly, is like high school gym class taken to an even more humiliating level. Some guys get three or four women competing for their attention; others get none and have to wait until the women are rejected in turn and, finally, grudgingly head their way.

Justin Gunn is called the "cruise director" of this operation, but the contestants themselves quickly take charge and get nasty — or get vulnerable.

Gina makes fun of Toni's surgically enhanced breasts. Lisa admits to a childhood of insecurity ("When I was 8 years old, some guys barked at me because I was so ugly"), and Michael, one of the guys who was standing dateless at the start, confesses, "I used to weigh 250 pounds."

To this point, it looks like "The Ha-a-a-a-a-te Boat" — or at least the Self-Loathing Carnival Cruise. But then something happens, in these close quarters, that has people changing their initial impressions of one another, seeking out conversational topics outside of the obvious and superficial ones, and actually learning a little about each other, and themselves.

This is due, no doubt, to creators Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, who launched MTV's "The Real World" franchise a decade ago and know what it takes to make a successful reality TV franchise. The casting and setting are crucial — but so is the opportunity for people to bond as well as to compete, to learn as well as to manipulate.

The preview tape provided by Fox didn't have the results of the first show's elimination vote. My surprising reaction, and the reason for this new series' three-star rating, is that I wished it had.